So the hatemail dubbed me THE.... Sodomite Hal Duncan!! (sic) So I will wear that with pride, cuntfuckers. It's like The Outlaw Josie Wales only better, right? I mean, did he have a fully capitalised THE, an extra-long dramatic pause, and two exclamation marks? No, he did not. Chickenshit.

"Hal Duncan's cheeky and charming Scruffian stories hide a steely shiv of inspection that digs uncompromisingly into the ribs of the establishment. This latest volume, populated as always with wonderful characters old and new, deepens that exploration and brings it bang up to date. I loved every word of it." -- Neil Williamson

And with that we now have the absolute final covers for the hardback and trade paperback:

There's still copies of the hardback going, and of course the paperback too, with both now printing right now and hopefully arriving in time for the August shipping date.

I have to say I'm pretty fuckin chuffed at how these have turned out--inside as well as out--enough so that I couldn't resist a look at the stories of the mythos to date. I was thinking initially of just re-issuing Fabbles:1 with a new matching cover and a bit of spruce on the interior design, mainly just so's to have a nice matching pair for meself. But with "How a Scruffian Sleeps Sound" only available in the deluxe Scruffians!, and the stories in Fabbles:1 now in The Boy Who Loved Death... except for The Taking of the Stamp, it didn't really strike me as still sensible, the original reason for that chapbook being to collect what wasn't in the first short story collection. They're all kinda scattered across the two collections now with that one story only in one edition and the novella a stand-alone ebook, so... aye...

Anyway, needless to say I got sucked into my collagist mindset and started trying to work out how all the fabbles might fit together as components in the bigger narrative arc and in yer more abstract compositional sense--rhythm, form, dynamics, thematics--if I was thinking chapbook(s).

Long story short, yes, I now have two more of these fuckers in the pipeline, A Scruffian Primer and A Scruffian Feastiary, rearranging and (in minor ways) tweaking the stories, and with a few wee illos and such inside just to give it the same finish. I'll do hardbacks, but mainly so's I can stick a set on me own shelf. Mostly it's for paperbacks to try and flog at events, for folk reticent about jumping into an ongoing series. And kinda because now I'm seeing the planned stories falling into a couple of chapbooks like this to complete that big narrative arc. Both clock in at the same length as the Survival Guide, and both--if I say so meself--have the same kinda unity as works in and of themselves. I think all three, and the others to come, are gonna work really fucking nicely together.

So, yeah. I'm reckoning on a Christmas release for those two, so I can take a break from hustling and maybe even get some review copies out in a timely manner. And in the meantime, Imma get back to Scruffianising new crib mates and scribbling new fiction. Watch this space, as they say.